A Rape in Cyberspace
A Rape in Cyberspace is an article written by Julian Dibbell and published in The Village Voice in 1993. The article was later included in Dibbell’s book My Tiny Life on his LambdaMOO experiences. It is considered by some to be an important part of science and technology studies.
“A Rape in Cyberspace” describes a cyberrape performed by a Mr. Bungle in a MUD, or multi-user dimension, called LambdaMOO, and the repercussions of his act. Mr. Bungle made use of the “voodoo doll” subprogram on LambdaMOO, which allowed him to attribute actions to other characters that their users did not write, and sexually violated a number of the other LambdaMOO characters. His actions incited outrage among the LambdaMOO community and brought up questions among users about the boundaries between real-life and virtual reality, which can be related to the movie eXistenZ, and how LambdaMOO should be (or should not be) governed.
In the immediate aftermath of the night of Mr. Bungle’s offense, several of his victims posted on the in-MOO mailing list, *social-issues, about the emotional trauma caused by his actions. One user called his voodoo doll activities “a breach of civility” while, in real life, “post-traumatic tears were streaming down her face”. However, despite the passionate emotion, including anger, voiced by many users on LambdaMOO, none were willing to punish Mr. Bungle through real-life means.
The users of LambdaMOO set up a meeting time on the third day after the event, which Dibbell attended under his character name, the pseudonym Dr. Bombay, to discuss what should be done about Mr. Bungle. The meeting lasted approximately two hours and forty-five minutes but no conclusive decisions were made. After attending the meeting, a “wizard,” or one of the master-programmers of LambdaMOO, under the username JoeFeedback, decided on his own to terminate Mr. Bungle’s account. Additionally, upon his return from his business trip, the “archwizard” Haakon, LambdaMOO’s main creator, known in real-life as Pavel Curtis, set up a system of petitions and ballots where anyone could put to popular vote anything requiring wizardly (master-programmer) powers for its implementation. Through this system, LambdaMOO users put into place a @boot command, which temporarily disconnects disruptive guest users from the server, as well as a number of other new features.
Implications
Critical to the incident was the behavior of the individuals who attempted to punish the perpetrator. The LambdaMOO community realized that they lacked laws governing such incidences and needed to determine proper punishments for crimes. Eventually, Mr. Bungle was removed from the system permanently thanks to the actions of user JoeFeedback. However, LambdaMOO still lacks the power to take real life legal actions against the person behind an avatar.
References
Dibbell, Julian. "A Rape in Cyberspace." The Village Voice 21 Dec 1993.